Indonesia taps Japan, India, China expertise for free school meals as Prabowo battles cost concerns

Indonesian president-elect Prabowo Subianto’s ambitious plan to introduce free school meals nationwide to tackle child malnourishment has sparked concerns about its potential drag on the country’s finances.

Prabowo’s team is hoping to address these concerns by looking to countries such as Japan, China and India, which have implemented and spent prudently on such programmes.

Analysts warn that Indonesia faces multiple economic and logistical challenges that would make it difficult for Prabowo to adopt the regional models.

The free school meal programme was one of the key election campaign promises of Prabowo, who will take over from President Joko Widodo in October.

The 72-year-old defence minister has said the scheme offering school students free lunches and milk was a “necessity” to curb child malnourishment in the country.

Data from the country’s health ministry shows 21.6 per cent of Indonesian children under the age of five experienced stunting – stunted growth and other developmental problems caused by malnutrition.

Prabowo hopes the free meal programme will help reverse this trend. Most Indonesian schools do not provide free food to students. His programme envisions free meals for 83 million underprivileged children and is estimated to cost 71 trillion rupiah (US$4.35 billion) in 2025.

Prabowo’s team estimates the initiative will cost up to 450 trillion rupiah (US$27 billion) when it is fully implemented in 2029 and boost economic growth by 2.6 percentage points.

To achieve this, Prabowo is said to be considering measures including tightening tax enforcement and cutting the budget for Widodo’s US$32 billion capital relocation project.

The meal programme has been criticised by the World Bank and the International Monetary